Back in November, while the world was going ga-ga over the vault tracks from Taylor Swift’s iconic 1989 album re-release, a British band were celebrating their highest-charting album in their 43-year history.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – or OMD of late – released their 14th studio album, Bauhaus Staircase, to great critical acclaim in the same week as Taylor. Peaking at number two, it represented their most successful album since their 1988 Best of OMD compilation, proving without question that their popularity endures.
Touring Europe on the back of a number two record, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys prove that acts who hit it big in the 80s don’t need to rely on nostalgia festivals for acclaim, and that audiences will still flock to a show where they expect to hear a mixture of (excellent) new material as well as the old classics.
This was evidenced within just a few minutes of the band’s arrival, as they seamlessly segued from recent release Anthropocene into their 1980 debut top 40 hit, Messages. Indeed, for someone new to the band, it was hard to discern which of the two songs was 44 years old, such is their consistently excellent production.
“Don’t you dare sit down” urged McCluskey, asking the packed house to bounce up and down to History of Modern (Part 1) – a song about the end of the universe.
Racing through some of their most well-known hits, they paused to acknowledge their “Hollywood moment” – images of Molly Ringwald accompanying the US hit If You Leave from the film Pretty in Pink – before Humphreys took the mic for a lovely rendition of 1986 hit (Forever) Live and Die.
What I particularly love about OMD, and what sets them apart from many of their contemporaries, is the unusual subject matter that underpins much of their work.
Their latest album is inspired by a 1932 painting by German artist Oskar Schlemmer, while tracks from it are variously inspired by ecological themes and far-right politicians – indeed single Kleptocracy opines that “it doesn't matter who you voted for, they bought the man that you elected”.
In just one evening OMD gave us songs about the development of modern AC electricity, 1920s silent film star Louise Brooks, and Nikolai Tesla, alongside a brace of superb early-1980s singles about Joan of Arc (explaining to a companion after Joan of Arc that it’s not even the best song OMD wrote about the 15th-century saint was a particular highlight. They responded by playing the magnificent Maid of Orleans next).
The newer material sounded as urgent and fantastic as the hits many had come to see – the beautiful Veruschka was as spine-tingling as the likes of Souvenir and Locomotion.
A shout-out also for a personal favourite of mine – Dreaming failed to break the top 40 in 1988 but was one of the first seven-inch singles I remember buying.
In the week that Oppenheimer swept the board at the Oscars, it was perhaps fitting that the main set ended with a similar warning about the devastating impact of the atomic bomb.
Enola Gay – perhaps the band’s signature song – has rarely sounded more prescient, dressing up a song about the horror of Hiroshima in a for-the-ages synth riff, and reminding us that “the kiss you give, is never ever going to fade away”.
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